Refrigerators are home appliances that provide a storage room kept at a temperature lower than the room temperature. Food can be kept cold or frozen in the storage room for long time.
In general, a refrigerator includes a freezer compartment and a refrigerator compartment. For example, various foods can be kept cold in the refrigerator compartment.
A lighting device may be disposed in the refrigerator for illuminating a storage room of the refrigerator. A door switch may be disposed at a side of a front surface of a main body of the refrigerator for being turned on or off when a door of the refrigerator is opened or closed. The lighting device may be selectively turned on and off according to the on-off operations of the door switch.
The lighting device includes an illumination lamp and a lamp cover. The illumination lamp emits light, and the lamp cover encloses at least a portion of the illumination lamp.
However, the lighting device of the related art has the following disadvantages.
The illumination lamp includes an incandescent bulb as a light source. Incandescent bulb is relatively larger than other light sources such as a light emitting diode (LED). Therefore, the capacity of the storage room of the refrigerator reduces due to the large illumination lamp.
Furthermore, the incandescent bulb generates relatively much heat while emitting light. Thus, food may be inefficiently stored in the refrigerator compartment due to the heat generated by the incandescent bulb.
In addition, the incandescent bulb does not emit directional light. That is, the incandescent bulb emits light radially in all directions. Therefore, when the storage room is opened, light emitted from the illumination lamp can be directly transmitted to a user. Thus, the user may be dazzled by the light emitted from the illumination lamp.